The Tax Inspector

Maria Takis looked. She saw a smooth white scar the size of a two-cent piece surrounded by a soft blue stain.

Benny looked at her with large tear-lensed eyes. ‘My mother did this to me. Can you imagine that? My own mother tried to kill me.’

‘Benny,’ Maria said. ‘Please don’t do this to me. I am an auditor from the Australian Taxation Office.’

‘I was three years old.’

‘What is this serving?’

‘For Chrissake.’ Benny kicked out and smashed the glove box. It flipped off and fell on to the floor. ‘I’m trying to show you my fucking life.’ He looked at her. His eyes were big and filled with tears. ‘You wouldn’t come with me. I wanted you to come with me. I can’t stand that.’

‘Benny, what can I do? I’m a stranger to your family.’

‘You’re kind,’ he said. He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. He picked up the glove box lid and tried to fit it back on. ‘I know you’re kind.’

‘Benny,’ she gave him a tissue from her bag, ‘just take my word for it – I’m very selfish.’

He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘You care about other people, I know you do. You live all by yourself and you’re having this baby. That’s not selfish.’

Maria looked forward out the window, not wanting to hurt him, fearing his anger, wishing it would end.

‘You could have had an abortion.’ He persisted with the glove box lid. Every time he closed it, it dropped to the floor.

‘I often wish I had.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘You want to know the truth? I wanted to hurt the baby’s father. That’s why I’m having a baby – to make him feel sorry for the rest of his life.’

Benny took the glove box lid and squinted at it, as if trying to read a part number.

‘You’re kind,’ he said. ‘You can’t put me off by lying to me. I can replace this glove box,’ he said. ‘If you come back tomorrow I’ll replace it free.’

‘Benny I’m not coming back. I’m sorry.’

‘You come out here, you try to screw my life. I’m interested in you. I’m interested in your baby, everything. I like you, but you don’t even take the trouble to see how I live. You know how I live? I live in a fucking hole in the ground. You wouldn’t even use it for a toilet. Come and look at it. I’ll show you now.’

The Tax Inspector shook her head. She looked down at her skirt and saw it rucked above her knees. They looked like someone else’s knees – old, puffy, filled with retained fluid. In the middle of the anxiety about Benny she had time to register that she had developed ?dema.

‘You can’t just dump me. You think you can go away and leave me to rot in my cellar, just let me rot in hell, and nothing will ever happen to you because of it.’ He was folding his jacket. He was opening the car door. He was leaving her life.

Maria Takis waited for the door to slam. It did not seem smart to start the engine until it did.

50

Granny Catchprice had made her life, invented it. When it was not what she wanted, she changed it. In Dorrigo, she called them maggots and walked away. She had gelignite in her handbag and Cacka was nervous, stumbling, too shy to even touch her breasts with his chest.

There was no poultry farm, she made one. There was no car business, she gave it to him, out of her head, where there had been nothing previously. She freed him from his mother. She gave him a yard which he paved with concrete so he could hose it down each morning like a publican, a big man in his apron and gum boots. He was Mr Catchprice. She was Mrs Catchprice. She hired boys and girls in trouble and showed them how they could invent themselves. Little Harry Van Der Hoose – she tore up his birth certificate in front of him. He watched her with his mouth so wide open you could pop a tennis ball inside.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘What are you?’

Years later he wrote a letter from Broome where he had a drive-in liquor store. He said: ‘Before I had the good fortune to be employed by yours truly, I was what you would call a dead-end kid. Whatever life I enjoy here today, I have you to thank for.’

Mrs Catchprice stood in the annexe on Wednesday afternoon and watched them bring the horrid-looking ‘Big Mack’ tour truck right into the yard. It belonged to Steven Putzel, the pianist – a nasty little effort with sideburns and a tartan shirt. They had to move the Holdens and that black foreign car to one side. They made a mess of the gravel doing it.

Her daughter ran out from under the LUBRITORIUM sign, carrying guitar cases.

‘That’s a joke,’ Frieda said. She lit a Salem and folded her arms across her prosthetic chest. It was a bumpy, silly thing and she was sorry she had put it on.

‘What is?’

She looked and saw Mort was standing next to her. This sort of thing happened more and more. She damn well could not remember if she had known he was there or if he had sneaked up on her. She said nothing, gave nothing away. She held out the Salem pack to him. He shook his head.

‘What’s a joke?’ he said. She remembered then – he gave up smoking when he married Sophie.

She looked out of the window at her daughter who was now struggling out into the sunlight carrying a big amplifier.

‘Where’s she think she’s going?’ she said.

‘You know exactly what she’s doing,’ Mort said.

She guessed she did know. ‘She can’t sing.’

‘Jesus, Mum. Give up, will you?’ Mort grinned. She was a tough old thing, that’s who she was.

‘She used to sing as well as you. She used to sing the “Jewel Song” for your father. People would pay to hear that.’

‘Come on, lay off – you know she’s popular.’

‘Is she?’ said Granny Catchprice. ‘Truthfully?’

Mort folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her with a thin, wry grin on his face. ‘You’re not going to get a rise out of me.’

She was not sure if she was taking a rise out of him or not. She knew, of course, that Cathy sang in halls. She was popular enough to sing at a dance in a hall. She could sing for shearers, plumbers, that sort of thing.

‘She’d do anything to get herself written up,’ she said.

‘Our Cath always did like attention,’ he said. ‘It’s true.’

‘And you were always so bashful.’ Cathy was trying to climb into the truck and Frieda felt nervous that she had somehow allowed this thing to get this far. ‘She could be a bit more bashful with that backside.’

At ten years old, you should have seen her – a prodigy. She never knew what Country & Western was. She knew Don Giovanni, Isolde, Madame Butterfly. Her teacher was Sister Stoughton at the Catholic School. She sang ‘Kyrie Eleison’ at St John’s at Christmas before an audience which included the Governor General. There was no ‘Hound Dogs’ or ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. The nearest she came to Hill-Billy or Rock-a- Billy, she had a checked shirt and jeans with rolled-up cuffs to go and learn square dancing at the Mechanics’ Institute. She did not know anyone with duck-tailed hair or Canadian jackets. She did not like square dancing either, said it was like going fencing with a wireless playing. She was nine years old when she said that.

Frieda said: ‘I suppose she’s got our money entered in her bank book.’

She was trying to enlist him, but he took her shoulder and made her turn towards him.

‘Look at me,’ he said. He held her too hard. It hurt but she did not tell him. ‘Listen to what I’m saying – whatever Cathy is, she’s not a criminal. Now come on, be a good stick, eh? You’ve pushed her this far. You let her go ahead and jump.’

‘I’m not any sort of stick.’

‘Let her do what she wants to do.’

‘I’m going down to talk to her.’